Hello folks -
Doing a valve clearance check on my '61 MKII - when I bought the car, I was told the head and timing components been rebuilt / replaced in the last 2 years, with little miles on them - and from looking at the engine, I’ve no reason to think that’s not accurate. That said, I was getting a loud tick from a forward intake valve and the car has a miss at idle, so I checked the valve clearances today - order here is #1 through #6 respectively:
Intake: .001, .003, .003, .003, .009, .0015 Exhaust: .008, .006, .009, .005, .007, .006
The good news here is that the tappety intake valve is right where I pegged it with my stethoscope - BUT - I wasn’t expecting the generally tight intake clearances - .004 is the goal and I believe slightly more clearance is preferred over slightly less. Intakes on #1 and #6 were incredibly tight, I guessed at #1 because frankly I couldn’t get any feeler gauge to clear.
Exhaust side is a bit better, at least two are dead on, and one is close enough, but the other three are at least .002 off in one direction or the other.
SO here is my question - Is there any reason why a recently rebuilt head should have tighter clearances, or is this just a case where the builder got it wrong, and I need to correct it. What I don’t want is to spend the time making them right, only to discover that “the clearances are supposed to be tight following rebuild and they settle in by -.002 after 2000 miles”…or something like that. I’ve not heard that to be the case, but want to check before I take the time to switch everything around.
Oh…and gather up 6 billion shims…from…somewhere…
Thanks,
Allan.